items tagged with Don Faust

I’ve enjoyed every Prenzie Players production I’ve seen to date, but perhaps none more so than Pericles, Prince of Tyre. That’s actually odd to say, since William Shakespeare’s tale of the world's luckiest unlucky prince – a seafarer who really should just avoid the sea altogether – wouldn’t necessarily be called “fun.” Director Andy Koski and his cast, however, manage to find the humor in the script and bring it to the forefront, embellishing it and even adding quips of their own, and elicited lots of laughs from Saturday night’s audience.

There’s a charming naïveté at the core of the Internet Players’ debut production of The Tragedy of Sarah Klein, as the playwright’s perspective seems to be one often observed in college students and recent graduates – a belief that “I am one of the very few who sees certain injustices in the world, and I, alone, can wake the world up to them.” Wake-up calls of this sort are often attempted with protests, targeted vandalism, or, in the case of Sarah Klein, the stroke of a pen, yet while the Internet Players’ Thursday-night performance was poetic in word and impressive in scope – particularly in playwright/director Nathan Porteshawver’s staging – it was also pretentious and, at times, dull.

Genesius Guild's Ecclesiazusae is perhaps the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen on a local stage, and that's what I found so charming about it.
Read More About Jokers! Wild!: "Ecclesiazusae," At Lincoln Park Through August 8...

If there's one word I'd use to best describe Playcrafters Barn Theatre's current production, it would be "nice." And while that can be taken as an unflattering adjective, for The O'Conner Girls I mean it as a positive one; I left the opening-night performance with a smile on my face, one awash with the sweet nostalgia and dash of humor that put it there.

The Harrison Hilltop Theatre's The Graduate provides a respectable amount of fun, considering that almost nothing in it makes the least bit of sense. Adapted from Charles Webb's 1963 novel and/or Mike Nichols' seminal 1967 comedy, Terry Johnson's script frequently feels like the movie version on fast-forward - the playwright clumsily barrels through both the narrative and its complex emotional transitions - and the show's tone and performance styles are all over the map. Yet considering its frequently awkward and unconvincing elements, director Wayne Hess' comedy does at least offer one truly magical ingredient in Erin Lounsberry, whose performance here is insinuating, disturbing, sexy, and richly, deeply funny.